


Too Many Nightingales

by Zoya1416



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch, The Laundry Files - Charles Stross
Genre: Gen, Google Fail, Homage Charles Stross, Humor, The Concrete Jungle, Too Many Nightingales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 04:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14825352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: At Milton-Keynes, a busy set of coppers try to identify a confused man. The online search isn't helping them find this Nightingale bloke.





	Too Many Nightingales

I was fuming at my constable who was mishandling the online search on his phone.

'There's one in--oh, he's deceased.'

'And another--there's a professor in cell biology, but he's from Yorkshire .'

'Does he _sound _like he’s from sodding Yorkshire?' The man sitting in our ambulance with a shock blanket was mumbling and I couldn’t understand him, but he was mumbling in a pure RP accent .__

_______ _ _ _

__

‘Oh, this might be one. He keeps babbling about Chorley and there is one over in Chorley, in Lancashire.’

‘Good. How old is he?’

The constable fumbled with his phone a bit.

‘Sorry, sir, he’s only thirty.’

I’d been seconded as a DS, and it was not going well. We’d picked up a middle-aged man wandering about the central park in Milton-Keynes who was incoherent. He wasn’t dressed for the cold, either—wearing a shirt with cuff links, and what had once been fine trousers but were now grass and mud stained. His shoes might have been hand-made—I don’t keep up with what the posh wear. But no coat or jumper. The cut on his forehead wasn’t deep, and the attendant said all his vitals were fine. He’d told us his name, but then slipped into babbling. My constable said he could find anyone by going through public records, but this wasn’t going well.

‘He might be—there’s that pedo in Manchester—’

‘That bastard is 27 and he’s still in jail. Dammit, quit pissing about.’

‘He did say something about Basingstoke, and we’ve got one there—umm sorry, that one is 75.’

The posh bloke in front of us couldn’t have been more than 45. I really wanted to clip my constable on the ear, but that’s not best practice now.

‘One in London is 40—fuck, he’s black.’

‘Constable.’ I was mentally going through the black mark I’d put on his record. It was 2 am, we needed to get him to hospital and stop mucking around.

‘Got it! Right here from Milton-Keynes!’

‘You could have said!’

When we picked him up the man had said something about the cows. Those damn concrete cows again—they’d been fucked up ever since they were installed. Six—three cows and three calves, and they’d been a target for pranks for decades. Painted pink, had pants put on them, graffitied—everything. But why had he come here tonight—not good. Did he know about the extra one? I’d have to tell Angleton.

Now he was arguing with the ambulance attendant .

‘I do not need to go to hospital! I walked home from Germany after being shot.’

The babbling was getting worse, then. We had to get him away from here.

‘Constable, what happened to the ‘I can find anyone in 3 minutes’ crap you told me about!’ Maybe a small smack on the back of the head? No, I didn’t need to have DPS involved.

‘Sir, I’m sorry, but there are just so many of them.’

‘How many bloody Thomas Nightingales can there be for crissake!’

He looked at me guiltily. ‘One hundred thirteen in Britain. And another 40 or so USians and Canadians.’

I resisted the urge to pound my forehead. ‘This is bloody ridiculous, get him on the stretcher now.’

The attendant and the driver were trying to persuade the man to let them transport him, but he was still resisting. We couldn’t give him anything, and I didn’t want to force him. This was tricky.

A silver Jag pulled up onto the gravel beside the park and a mixed race young man hopped out the driver’s side. 

‘I’m PC Peter Grant of the SAU, and this is my guvnor. We can take it from here.’

He flashed me a warrant card, and I examined it. Why was the Met involved with this? All the way from London. Flash bastards.

‘Our medical crew needs to—' I started to say.

'I'm DCI Thomas Nightingale from the Folly.' The man we'd picked up interrupted me. 'I had a bump on the head, but I'm fine now, and I need to return to London. Dr. Walid can take it from here.'

The PC went over to the man he said was his guvnor and started to help him down from the ambulance, but the apparent DCI Nightingale glared at him and stood up easily.

Grant said,‘We’ve got our own medical specialist. Dr. Walid knows DCI Nightingale, and the specialist care he needs. We can treat him at UCH.'

A ginger in about his 50’s got out from the passenger side with his medical bag. I considered this. 

'He should by rights have an MRI. The hospital on the far side of the city has one.' But it would take at least 45 minutes to get there, even at this time of night, and the man seemed much better now.

The doctor had finished a quick exam and was helping DCI Nightingale into the Jag. He answered me in a soft Highland accent.

'He might have had a small concussion, but he's completely stable and his mind is clear. No reason to mess around here.'

‘Why was he here, do you know? He looks like he’s been wrestling in the mud and he has no coat.’

PC Grant looked pained. ‘It’s a classified operation, sir. Operation Gorgon, and we can’t say anything more.’

I froze. No one but the Laundry was supposed to know about the extra cow and the suspected gorgonism. 

‘How did you—’

‘Sorry, sir, but we have to leave now. We’ve been read into this by Angleton. All the stakeholders in Operation Gorgon have been tasked with forming a unified approach, clarifying and coordinating the elements of attack with this emergency. The involved agencies decided that the SAU needed to be on board as well to ascertain if any rogue elements were the ethically challenged practitioners which fall into our jurisdiction. DCI Nightingale was to meet what he believed was an informant, but there was an apparent hostile agent. We’re on it, sir.’

‘Your unit—the SAU—who are they?’

The constable smiled. ‘We’re the unit linked to your unit to evaluate agents who may be using...other means to commit crimes. It’s laterally related to your unit but doesn’t overlap. I can forward the organisational chart to your constable here.’

Somehow I found myself nodding as they helped DCI Nightingale into the Jag. I had my own work to carry out, and I could report on this back at the Laundry. I shook my head and turned away. My assignment was back with the damn cows. I was pretty sure the extra one had been a real cow turned to stone and someone might have hijacked the CCTV basilisk program. I’d follow up with the SAU later.

‘Right you are then. Go off.’

The Jag reversed and sped back on the road. 

***********  
Nightingale had thrown off our shock blanket as soon as I’d got him into the Jag. Abdul said that the cut was the only issue he could see, until we got the MRI to check for hyperthaumaturgical degradation. That wasn’t something I was leaving to the country copper. He would have to get on by himself. 

When we were safely back at UCH Dr. Walid wasn't happy with me. ‘I didn’t know you used glamour, Peter.’ Abdul was frowning as the MRI banged away.

I grinned. ‘It wasn’t a glamour, just my charm and fast talking. I had to get him out of there before he started wondering just what our involvement was.’ 

I sighed. It had been an odd arrangement—the Folly had been asked to spy on another magic-using agency I’d never heard of. It went up to the Home Secretary, I’d been told. Apparently no one was taking chances there was double-dealing with this Operation Gorgon. Nightingale had tried to explain it to me—something about a country-wide defense program through a CCTV-basilisk system, whatever that was. It was meant to guard against 'the Old Ones' and might have been hijacked, but his explanation sounded muddled.

When Nightingale's MRI had been declared normal I asked him, ‘What do you think happened with your troll informant, sir?'

‘It must have been a setup. But he only got one thump in, Peter.'

it was a hard thump if he'd been concussed, I thought. I’d been sent to one side of the city while Nightingale pursued a lead on the other side. Classic example of why the team doesn’t split up when going through the haunted house. We had him safe now, though.  
*********

My own constable was trying a weak grin.

‘Sorry about that. I didn’t know there were so many bloody Nightingales. You’re lucky it wasn’t you, sir, though, if we were to track you down sometime. There are over 200 Bob Howards.’

I knew that. It was the reason I’d been assigned that pseudonym. But other names—‘You said 113—that sounds unbelievable.’

The techie constable smiled at me. ‘That’s just the recent ones. The name goes back to the 1500’s at least. There was a baronetcy, a poet, and later a prominent Victorian Methodist minister…’

‘That’s enough. We’ll close up shop now.’ Then I would get back to my proper job, keeping the nation safe through the magic of mathematics and software. And a mountain of paperwork, just what I thought a magic unit meant.

******  
‘He’ll check, you know,’ I said to Nightingale the next morning at breakfast. ‘But I think we’re safe. Who’s going to believe in a Met unit keeping the nation safe through the magic of Latin and spells?’

‘Quite. And reports,’ he said, smiling a little. 

‘Right.’ Saving the country through a mountain of paperwork, just what I thought a magic unit meant.

'I'll get right on it, sir.'

**Author's Note:**

> The Laundry Files by Charles Stross and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronowitch are two British urban fantasy series. The systems of magic are quite different. Bob Howard has to contend with Lovecraftian horror as well as a huge bureaucracy. Rivers of London is more traditionally based with spells and ancient languages. The geeky Rivers of London constable Peter Grant would be fascinated with the computer based Laundry magic, if he ever learned of it. 
> 
> This came about when I was wondering just how odd a name Thomas Nightingale was. I didn't expect to find 113 of them. Yes, these are actual people, and have the occupations I've given them. Many of the locations mentioned are significant to ROL plots.
> 
> The real concrete cows of Milton-Keynes have suffered many indignities. Their plot is all Stross's and is too complicated to explain here.


End file.
